The Glass And The Bed

PEOPLE

Donald Sutherland has shaved his head partially bald and gone to China for his role as Norman Bethune, a Canadian surgeon who died fighting for Mao Tse- tung.

``I expect he will be portrayed somewhere between the glass and the bed,`` Sutherland said in Beijing when asked about Bethune`s reputation as a boozer and a womanizer.

Bethune was a communist who fought in the Sino-Japanese War and died of food poisoning in 1939. Mao immortalized him in an essay that later became prescribed reading during the Cultural Revolution.

A PLUG FOR KEN TUCKEY

The state of Kentucky thinks Ken Tuckey has a swell name.

Tourism Secretary Wendell Combs invited Tuckey, a commander in the Australian Royal Navy who is stationed at his nation`s embassy in Washington, D.C., and his family to visit the state.

Tuckey, 39, said he doesn`t mind becoming an honorary Kentucky colonel at all: ``We both benefit from it.``

HAGMAN NO BUDDHIST

Larry Hagman, the wily J.R. of CBS` Dallas, said Tuesday he`s not a Buddhist, and denied published reports that co-star Patrick Duffy has tried to convert him.

``This is totally made up. It is so far from the truth,`` said Hagman. ``I respect how Patrick feels about Buddhism, but I`ve certainly never had anything to do with it. We`ve never even discussed it....

``I often wear a Japanese kimono and they got an old publicity still of me looking very aesthetic and they printed that,`` said Hagman, whose family is Episcopalian.

AD AIMS AT TAMPERING

The scene is a phone booth, and a caller is threatening to poison a food or drug product.

``Make a product tampering threat from this box,`` warns the voice of actor Dennis Franz, Lt. Norman Buntz on Hill Street Blues, as the scene shifts to a prison cell, ``and you`ll end up in this box, for five years.``

The 30-second TV commercial is part of a planned nationwide advertising campaign to curb the growing number of product-tampering threats.

The campaign being launched this week in Chicago, where seven people died in 1982 after taking cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules, is a cooperative effort by the Food and Drug Administration, the FBI, the Advertising Council and several industry associations.

There were 1,692 tampering threats reported in the Unites States last year, up from 128 in 1985, according to FDA statistics.

NOTES AND QUOTES

-- Night Court`s star John Larroquette was asked to fill in for Johnny Carson as Tonight host on April 27 and he had three guest recommendations: Singer Tom Waits, poet Charles Bukowski and killer Charles Manson. ``They started writing Manson down until they realized who I meant,`` Larroquette says.

-- There are reports that ABC News may move chief European correspondent Pierre Salinger out of Paris after 10 years as part of a cost-cutting move.